Albert Einstein

Albert Einstein (14 March 1879-18 April 1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist who developed the theory of relativity (one of the two pillars of modern physics) and published over 300 scientific papers and 150 non-scientific works. Einstein is often regarded as one of the greatest scientists of all time.

Biography
Albert Einstein was born in Ulm, Bavaria, German Empire in 1879 to a Jewish family, and he was educated in Munich and then in Zurich, where he attended the technical school when he was 17. He became a schoolmaster, and he formulated his first special theory of relativity in 1905 before becoming a physics professor in Zurich in 1909. In 1912, he put forward a theory of photochemical equivalence and was made director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin, serving from 1914 to 1933. In 1916, he published Die Grundlagen der allgemeinen Relativitaetstheorie, in which his general theory of relativity revolutionized the previous Newtonian theory of the universe. For his observations, which were confirmed at a total eclipse in 1919, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics.

In 1933, Einstein fled Adolf Hitler's anti-Semitism and became a US citizen, teaching at Princeton. In 1939, he warned President Franklin D. Roosevelt of German research into the possibilites of an atomic bomb, and thus initiated the bureaucratic process which led to the US development of atomic weapons code-named the Manhattan Project. After 1945, he became increasingly alarmed at the potential threat to mankind through atomic warfare. Together with Bertrand Russell, he helped establish the Pugwash conferences of scientists against a nuclear war, which started in 1957. He became an icon of scientific genius for the twentieth century. His public image as a humane scientist was also based on his revulsion at the technology his discoveries led to, and a strong commitment to political and personal liberty.